McKie attended Philadelphia's Simon Gratz High School, where he was a letterman in basketball. As a senior, he was an All-Scholastic choice and an All-Southern Pennsylvania choice, and helped lead his team to the Public League championship and a 26 wins-4 loss record, averaging 18.9 points, 9.9 rebounds, and 7.2 assists per game. He graduated from Gratz in 1990.[1]

After redshirting his freshman year, McKie finished his three-year career at Temple University tied for sixth on the school's all-time scoring list with 1,650 points, averaging 17.9 points per game while starting all 92 games. He teamed up with eventual All-Star Eddie Jones at Temple, and was named first-team All-Atlantic 10 and he was named to the A-10 all-tournament team as a senior. As a junior, he was the 1993 Atlantic 10 Conference Player of the Year, after averaging 20.6 points per game.

On August 12, 2005, he was waived by the 76ers as part of the one-time "Amnesty provision" of the new labor agreement, allowing the 76ers to waive a player to avoid the luxury tax on his salary. McKie signed with the Lakers on August 22, 2005 and played 14 regular-season games for them.

On February 1, 2008, McKie, who was a Sixers assistant coach at the time, was traded by the Lakers to the Memphis Grizzlies, along with Kwame Brown, Javaris Crittenton, rights to Marc Gasol, and the 2008 and 2010 first-round draft picks, for Pau Gasol.[3][4] The Lakers' acquisition of Pau Gasol was only approved by the league office when the Lakers called McKie to inform him that they wanted to sign him and throw him in for salary-cap reasons.

After being released by the Grizzlies, McKie rejoined the Philadelphia coaching staff as an assistant in September 2008. He remained in that position until 2013.[6] He left the Sixers staff to join the Temple Men's basketball staff under Fran Dunphy. Temple University announced that he would replace Fran Dunphy as the head coach of the men's basketball team starting with the 2019 season.[7]